


Away, away

by RedRarebit



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, a glance back at Kraglins life, because thats the sort of people we are, look at this, the how and why he went to the stars, the start of something much bigger and horribly glorious, we're honestly very excited and you should go read the companion piece to this as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9311756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRarebit/pseuds/RedRarebit
Summary: Companion piece toIt calls meby Write_like_an_American, showing Kraglins start to the stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Write_like_an_American](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/gifts).



The first time he spotted one of the small, pinpricks of whiter than usual light, Spare stared at in in open-jawed fascination until he's tugged along the line by the pod elder. He trailed and dragged his feet with unwillingness, lets his arm reach out to its longest length - not impressive at his meager age of six - to keep his eyes fixed on it. It doesn't move, doesn't stutter, doesn't seem to be a long line of light like all the other tubes they keep running here with sheer force of will, sweat and blood. 

When it disappears in an instant, winking away behind a foggy swathe he hurried his step, tired under the crush of the sudden gravity lock as the doors of the tunnel click shut behind him. His brothers and sisters, a little stronger then him and more energized by the food and rest they've had, test the limits the new weight gives them, ran and scampered in a disorganized herd around the old woman and her charge - she has long given up trying to count them or keep them in line, as long as they're all travelling in near about the same direction.

"What was the light?" He asked, the hand not tightly clasped in her claw-like grip tugged at her sleeve. She looked down at him, absent and distracted by the noise of three other boys, mock-snarling and snapping at each other in a promising, amateur scuffle that looks like it could turn either nasty or adoring in an instant. So young, it’s hard to tell where their place in the fight castes will be, but she has been doing this for years and can feel the lines of where muscles will lie and bone will forge strong.

Besides, she’s counted all their teeth every last-day to make sure all are growing as intended. She knows which will feel fire in their blood and hear the old drums.

"Lights?"

"Up." He struggled with the concept for a moment, trying to name what he'd seen with a clumsiness that he resented. "Up higher then us, where the smoke goes."

"There is nothing for us up there. It is where the trade ships roll." She explained, gently nudging them all along to the little stacks of beds. Spare huffed a moment before he clambered to his bunk, hanging out of it to waggle his tongue at a sister. She growled and batted at him until he laughed and swung away, up out of reach.

"Where do the trade ships come from?"

"Are you assigned to a shipping master?" A brother teased, his voice carrying down three bunks along with the merry peals of laughter from the others at the very idea of it. "Are you going to chart the ships for rations and clothes and goods?"

"No." Spare relished the idea of biting this brothers leg as he comes down for morning meal tomorrow, entertaining the idea until he can feel the pinpricks in the back of his jaw that signal the fuzzy push of his second row. No need for it now though, nothing he could really use, but something for him to cherish and run his tongue over the little pokes of bone through gum. 

"They come from much bigger planets." The elder sat herself beside the little sleep tower, watched them fuss and squabble with the bedding until they're all comfortable, drowsing and intent on their rest. Spare rolled until he could see her, two dark eyes watching her from under a mop of ill-cut hair, dirty with dust and mud, ragged on one side where he'd caught it under a bar a few solars ago. 

"But what are the lights called?" She considers the question for a moment, weighs it against the heavy feel of bone under his gums, the hard push of ridges she'd felt on the last counting. 

She loves them all, identical and angry and restless as they all are. And she is afraid for all of them. 

"They are called stars, Spare." She can't help but feel guilt from the way his eyes light up with the sound of it, and he rolls the word around in his mouth before he says it, a slow test of the crispness of it, the newness savoured in his voice. "Pilots use them to navigate."

"Are there more?"

"Be quiet." A sister higher up complained, her voice reedy with annoyance, and the elder chuckled a little as she dimmed the lights even further, plunging them into the pitch darkness they will come to know well. 

"Sleep." She instructed, can pick out his irritated huff even in the shuffle and scuffle of children resettling themselves. "There is much work-"

"-to be done tomorrow." The children chorus with her voice, an off-beat echo borne from hearing and knowing the same words for years on end now. They laugh a little, tired and pushing to sleep almost against their will, the reaction a conditioned response to the little mantra.

-

There were few things he could call his own, in the collective raising system of Hrax. But he found a dark rock in a training day, scrabbling in the miredarks of the lower tunnels. It’s almost black, smoked grey in the edges, with a swirl of blue ore that flaked off if he picked it too much. Hidden in the blue though, there are white and silver speckles that flare up if he tilts it just-so in the light.

He loves it.

-

There was much work to be done tomorrow.

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, the days rolled on and on, seemingly without relief or end to the toil. There was coal and minerals to be loaded onto ships, and when they were older and splintered off from each other, there were minerals to dig and scrape from the earth. Kraglin lost track of two sisters, gained three brothers, broke the same arm three times and has been in a fight at least twice a rotation. 

And above all, he had a name, a proud little nod to his ability to scale up and down the craggy cliff faces that are blasted sheer into the rocks. Grown for organ transplants that ended up unneeded, his body seemed to rejoice at its continued existence and sprouted tall and long, in defiance at the idea of being merely a farm for others to harvest from. He towered over the boys his own age, an awkward specter of bones, pale skin, dark eyes and the start of a hooked nose that he often scraped and caught on points of rocks if he wasn't paying attention. 

All of this, as far as they go, is normal enough. 

"Kraglin!" He raised his head as best he could in the shallow tunnel, water up to his waist. It was a cool relief, something to enjoy even as his fingers traced the thin, spidery lines carved here by his people years and ages past, tracing their descent into the planet as the hunt for resources started to reach fever pitch. This is the closest he'd been to the surface in years, and its dizzying in a way. A little way ahead, distinct even in the grey murkiness, two of his crew mates pulled on a piece of organic panel, and he hurried forward to help them pry it off the old fastenings.

By rights, they shouldn't be here. The older tunnels are sealed off for a reason, unsafe and unsanitary even by their standards. But for the fourteen year old boys, bold and braver when they're egging each other on, there is no greater thrill than slipping past the guards after lights out to follow the paths of their ancestors. The punishments are half-hearted at best - there is no adult in the mining caste who can honestly claim they never took the same trips towards the surface, seeking something unnameable in the darkness. 

Behind it, cool air billowed forth, and they fell back from it, spluttering in the cloud of rocks and dust that follow the wood. Blinking, they peered out of the side of the abyss, leaning out with confident fingers dug into the edge of the hole. It stretched wide and deep before them, sinking down into the earth and the blackness below. Here and there, there are other holes - further down they are lit with orange light, further still with blue, deep in the refineries.

Kraglin shut his eyes as he leaned forward, breathing in lungfuls of the air - its not clean, and he suspects he can taste the bitter tang of smoke from the dye-pits in it, but its not as humid and muggy as their current tunnel, and he looks down to watch the water ebb and flow around their thighs over the edge to crash down, leagues and leagues below. 

For a moment, he absently wondered if it was going to break something, fall onto a machine or a roof, but then he idly looks above them, working a crick from his neck. 

When he looks up, his sure grip almost fails him, and he gasps. Above the gash carved into the planets face swirl clouds and smoke, dark and forbidding, making a thick ceiling over the whole planet. But buffeted by an outflow further down, there are bare patches, and hidden there, are the patterns and friends he made for himself years past.

It had taken so much time and effort to steal the data files he had wanted as a child, and they were rarely in his possession for more than a few shift cycles before they were recovered. But day by day, he had pieced together a partial map of the lights above them, learned their names and given them - stories, feelings of their own. Each night when they were led down to their dorm, he trailed behind and strained to pick some out, glad when he did. 

It wasn't anything he would ever need for his work, they had told him each time, scolding him and tired as they took the files away. He was not built to fly out there, almost none of them were. Only certain people were picked out to join the orbital couriers, pilots of blocky and uncertain craft that the Hraxlians were barely proud of, and unwilling to maintain.

All the knowledge in the files came from people beyond the stars - and Kraglin had been astounded by the idea, though he supposed it should have made sense. Where else were they sending their work to, if not to other people. But the idea of those people coming from their own planets, orbiting in wild circles around those tiny dots, had been staggering to him.

And here were more of them then he'd ever seen at a time, all laid out before him. It had been years, and-

And he caught himself before he fell, drinking in the little glimpses and winks of light before they were covered and revealed again in turn.

-

Kraglin returned the next night, alone. He crept from the hole, swung himself up from one line of cuts to the next. It was slow work, and more then once he had to stop and cling to the cliff face to keep himself attached when sharp, screaming winds howled down from landing pads or chutes of - he couldn't begin to guess what. Soon his spidery frame had made it over the next outcrop, and he flopped belly-down against the gravity to rest a moment.

When he rolled onto his back, he groaned. The stars seemed no closer, but he felt as if he was making progress towards them. It felt better to lie here and enjoy the view anyway, and Kraglin laced his fingers over his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his ribs. 

He had shift in three cycles. He knew this, and that he hadn't slept much at all the night before, enjoying the freedom with his friends. Work the past day had been grueling through the fog of tiredness, and more then once he'd had to cover his head against a shower of dirt from above, hedged into the tunnel so tightly his shoulders were scraped raw even through his gear. Tomorrow would be worse, deadly when one had to keep their mind close to them to survive. 

If he could work above the tunnels, to work with the pilots... 

It was a foolish idea. He had already been assigned his role, and he could stick with it. He was good at it, Kraglin had been told this time and time again and yet the words had never filled him with the pride he had seen puffing up his workmates.

He had been hungry for so long, Kraglin had realized, and last night had been like tasting meat again after a famine.

-

"Obfonteri!" The name was roared into the hall, lines of workers trailing in and out of the caverns. Shift clocks winked and updated, monotone voices of computers and AIs rattled off numbers and bonuses, locations of seams that were yet to be plundered, orders coming in from the far-off places.

Kraglin pulled the hood up further over his head, ducked a little to hide his somewhat distinctive profile and shoved his hands in his pockets as he sped his walk to a purposeful jog.

There was a crate of Seam Eight that was to be loaded to a steamer that was docked. He had made sure to miss a few tubes, had reported them and been sent to fill the crate with the needed cargo. He'd marked the crate, copied down the route and now - now he was sure he could follow it. The upper-warrens were unfamiliar to him after so many years away from them, the air making his chest sting with the coldness of it. 

But he soon copied the way they walked up here, could see in the brighter lights without squinting too much. Down there, the noise was no less deafening, just - different to the grinding and thudding of machinery. There was chatter and talking, in languages he had never heard of, people wandering too and fro the docking pads, and he did his best not to stare.

"Missing cargo?" The woman behind the desk asked, and he nodded, looking over his shoulder for a moment before looking back to her, apologetic. 

"Musta been too dark to see the missing pack." He explained, fumbling in his pockets. He pulled out a piece of paper, scrawled on inexpertly, but she barely glanced at it. Instead she waved him on through the massive doors and Kraglin slipped through them. 

Before him lay a mass of people and metal, tall towering things that made him feel dizzy to look up at for too long. They were bright and muted, all sorts of fantastic shapes and markings, all battling for attention in his eyes. Kraglin did his best not to gawk as he walked to where the crates were piled, opening one up and nestling the tubes in. 

When he peered behind the crate, the darkness of the open cargo hold beckoned him. Behind the darkness, in his minds eye, the countless glittering stars pulled him in, whispering silvery nothing in his ears and his fingers itched on the metal edge. 

He would be missed. Kraglin was already tardy from his shift, written off for the day as wandering and daydreaming again, as he had been for the past ten rotations. But he wouldn't be looked for until after the shift, by which point the ship would be long gone.

And what did he have to stay for? Already, Kraglin could feel the thick coating in his chest that rattled when he coughed, spent his time with his head hung over the basins to hack out thick clods of black and brown and grey. If he was lucky he would make it to his late twenties, sent down into the dark mines to feel out the precious gems and jewels that were sunk deep into the hardrocks. 

They said some jewels came up stained with blood and fingernails in the box, pried from the earth with their bare hands.

-

The cargo hold was freezing, and he blew on his hands to try and warm them desperately. Kraglin had tucked himself between two boxes and a tarp, staying perfectly still when someone had come by on a brief inspection. Then the hold had rattled shut, there were the sounds of boots and then-

Then the roar of an engine, the clattering of landing gear, and the increasing dizziness of a decreasing gravity and pressure system. Kraglin had vomited twice, moved away from that area, and crushed himself against the side of the hold to stick to the shadows. 

Nothing for it. Staying in the hold meant almost certain death from exposure, while it was unlikely the captain of this ship would kill him for sneaking aboard. All he would have to do was work for the ship, and what was he good at if not working?

Nevertheless, he waited until all was silent before he found the path upwards, feeling out the door panel with shaking fingers. Kraglin stumbled forward to where the warm air was coming from, following the feeling of people and movement.

Instead of somewhere private, he found the bridge. And that was where the morning shift found him, curled against the side of the large windows, almost hidden entirely in the shadows.


End file.
